Transform Data Migration: From An IT Headache To A Business Opportunity

Data migration generally involves the transfer of data between systems when changing storage,
computer systems, data formats or applications. This brief focuses on the different forms of storage
migration and how Primary Data’s DataSphere software platform can be leveraged to non-disruptively
change, add, upgrade or tier the storage serving your data. In addition to simplifying migrations,
DataSphere can also deliver significant savings by lowering the operational expenses associated with
migrations, elongating the life of physical assets, and enabling organizations to procure and finance
storage in new ways.

KEY BENEFITS

THE STRUGGLE WITH STORAGE MIGRATIONS

Many vendors make a business of out of upselling new storage devices to customers every few
years. While these upgrades usually deliver new features to customers, few IT teams look forward
to a migration. DataSphere allows IT to ease or eliminate the common issues associated with data
migrations. Once DataSphere is in place, organizations are no longer faced with the headache
of planning and performing multiple steps to minimize disruption or downtime when migrating
storage systems. Those issues include performing disruptive or destructive upgrades to existing
storage systems, moving active or critical data to a more performant storage tier, or pushing
less active data down to a lower cost storage resource. With DataSphere, IT no longer has to
stop access to data by halting applications, manually copy data to the new storage and
reconfigure, then restart the applications.

Not only do migrations typically take months of planning, but storage migrations also consume a
large portion of IT’s budget and resources. Many enterprises have taken a remedial approach by
creating symbolic links (symlinks) to give an alias a name and location for a file. In
actuality, the alias references a different target file or directory path that allows the
movement of data to different locations. This approach is highly vulnerable to rogue activity,
broken links/paths and permissions. In all data migration cases, DataSphere can make the effort
of moving data completely transparent to applications.

HOW DATASPHERE HELPS

DataSphere is a metadata engine designed to separate the architecturally rigid relationship
between applications and storage to achieve unprecedented improvements in performance,
efficiency and scalability. It leverages the latest advancements in NFS 4.2 environments
natively or can be deployed with DataSphere Extended Services (DSX) in legacy NFS v3, SMB 2.1
and 3.x environments to gain insight into how an application makes use of its data. With this
knowledge, DataSphere can place or move data to different storage types or tiers without
disrupting an application’s access, even while the data is in flight.

When utilizing DataSphere to retire aging or older equipment, IT has several options that are
not available with traditional migration tools. Decommissioning is simple and can take place
with a single action, such as changing policies for the store or by throttling the capacity of
the storage volume. Data no longer has to flow from array to array and can move seamlessly to
several destinations at once. IT can choose to allow DataSphere to automatically place the data
according to the best fit as defined by configured policies. IT also has the ability to override
policies and fully control where data migrates through simple configuration options. DataSphere
can also extend an older storage investment by scaling out for more capacity and performance.
With DataSphere’s file granular approach, a user can prescribe particular methods down to a file
or directory level to best match the needs of the application and business purpose. Regardless
of method employed by the administrator and DataSphere, data is moved non-disruptively with no
impact to applications. The data movement process also ensures that the bandwidth used for
migration is not disruptive to applications or the storage systems involved.

Figure 1 - DataSphere enables IT to automate the flow of data to the right resource at the right time, across different types of storage and the cloud..

GRANULAR TIERING WITH DATASPHERE

Storage tiering is just another form of storage migration with a finer granularity. Using
DataSphere’s objectives and the varying performance attributes of the mounted storage types,
data is placed or moves between tiers to meet an administrator’s business goals. These new
capabilities improve the efficiency, performance, and scalability of software applications.
DataSphere’s unique architecture allows for migrations to occur while files are open and data is
actively being accessed. DSX Data Movers will ensure all reads and writes to data are completed
atomically even when the data is in flight to the target tier.

Figure 2 - DataSphere aligns IT-defined data objectives with the native capabilities of existing and new storage resources across attributes such as performance, price and protection.

GAIN FLEXIBILITY AND SAVE BUDGET BY LEASING STORAGE

Until now, adding and removing pools of storage beyond a single silo or array was difficult.
With DataSphere, enterprises can now consider easily leasing storage short term, whether on
premise or in the cloud. Data can freely move without application interruption to newly leased
storage, as well as off of end-of-lease storage. These options give IT unprecedented flexibility
in trying new storage technologies without long term commitments that lock IT into paying as the
data grows.

RIGHT DATA, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME WITH DATASPHERE

With DataSphere, admins can select the specific storage capabilities required to meet business
needs. These objectives can be applied to single files, directories, or shares to provide
unprecedented control. DataSphere analyzes if objectives are being met and will automatically
move data to maintain compliance and tier data between different storage devices to meet
performance, cost or reliability requirements. DataSphere enables leasing storage for new levels
of price-performance storage options. Data migrations no longer have to be a stressful event and
instead become a business opportunity for IT to add value by optimizing infrastructure use to
meet changing data demands.